When Ginny first asked me if I’d write a blog post for her while she was off sunning herself in Cancun (bitch), my first reaction was to say no. She told me it had to be about Pittsburgh. I haven’t lived in Pittsburgh for 22 years and no one wants to read about why I miss Pittsburgh. Except my mother. When I told my mother that I was guest posting for Ginny, she immediately said, “You should write about why you miss Pittsburgh.”

My mother likes to read really boring things.

Anyway, I decided that I’d offer my insight into the one thing in Pittsburgh that I know anything about: The Fort Pitt Tunnel.

I’m kidding. I don’t know anything about tunnels or bridges or the Pirates. I do own a Pirates baseball cap, and every time I wear it in Texas I half expect someone to blow my head off with a concealed handgun.

In reality, the one Pittsburgh-related thing I know anything about is your fearless leader: PittGirl. Or as we call her in our family, PittGirl.

We’re not a very clever family.

I thought I’d share with you a few things you probably don’t know about PittGirl. Maybe demystify her a little bit for you.

When she was pregnant with her first child, she Pringle’d her way to high blood pressure.

We were at the beach for our annual family vacation, and we all watched in awe as she Hoover’d can after can after can of Pringles. She made all kinds of statements that made us realize that she had no self-awareness whatsoever. Statements like, “I can’t believe I haven’t been hungry at all this week,” and, “My shorts are feeling tighter, which is weird because I have no appetite,” and, “The scale says I gained 20 pounds this week, but I don’t know how that could have happened because I barely ate a meal.”

Every single one of those statements was made with a mouthful of Pringles.

None of us had the heart to tell her that we could actually identify the flavor of Pringles (sour cream) she was eating the very moment that her ankles lost their inherent boniness and became fleshy, water-retaining cankles.

She was so buoyant from the salt and retained water that she could not have sunk in the ocean if our entire family sat on her. (I might have the science wrong on that. I know fat doesn’t sink in The Dead Sea, but I’m just assuming something bloated with salt and water would not sink in the ocean. )

Anyway, she was a whale. She wore a black swimsuit so she looked like a tan Orca.

Note to Ginny: You’re totally sexy and not at all salt-filled now.

She has peed in a peanut can.

Back in the day when seatbelts were routinely cut out of cars because they snagged pantyhose, our family was taking a trip to Florida. The station wagon was pimped out. There were suitcases across the floor so that the hump was no longer a hump and instead was now the center of a very comfy bed. The entire back of the station wagon was made into a giant sleeping area.

It was glorious. Deadly, but glorious.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a road trip with six females, but six females will never have to pee at the same time. If my dad stopped the car every time one of us had to pee, we would probably still be driving to Florida.

Unfortunately for Ginny, she had to pee at a time when no one else had to pee, so Dad was not stopping the car. She had two options: hold it or find something to pee in. As luck would have it, we had an empty peanut can available, so Ginny crouched in the back of the wagon and peed in the peanut can.

This event gave birth to a song that our whole family still sings to this day. It goes like this: “Ginny peed in a peanut can. Ginny peed in a peanut can. Ginny peed in a peanut can.” Join in when you know the words!

In fact, if you happen to see her in public, she’d love it if you sang it to her.

This was the same road trip where Ginny insisted she saw a giant, pink elephant on the side of the road, but we think that she was probably just hallucinating from being filled up to her brain with urine.

(Just as a note, she’s entirely a toilet pee-er now.)

In her household which consists of two drivers, one of whom is her husband who grew up in Mexico where the only posted driving rule is “Don’t run over it unless you’re sure it’s already dead,” she is not the safer driver.

Proof #1. Until one year ago, she did not know you aren’t allowed to change lanes in the middle of an intersection and would frequently use the intersection for that very purpose.

Proof #2. She once rear-ended a stopped vehicle because the heel of one of her infamous do-me boots got stuck beneath the gas pedal and she couldn’t stop her car.

Proof #3. When she was 17 years old, she pinned my knees between two cars because she couldn’t figure out forward and reverse.

My advice here is never get in the car with her and never walk near her car if she is sitting in the driver’s seat, even if the car isn’t running. In fact, I’d suggest the same thing if you ever see her on a riding lawn mower. Or playing with Hot Wheels.

This is good advice. You should really write it down.

In her teens, she fancied herself to be quite the artist.

However, she only drew eyes. And they were everywhere. She’d draw eye after eye after eye and hang them up on the wall next to our bunk-bed. If she ever drew a face, she never mastered it because all I ever saw was eyes. Staring, judging eyes.

If you need an eye drawn for any reason, she’s your artist. Especially if you want the eye to look a little bit possessed.

So basically if you’re in the market for evil eyes that you can use for your voodoo or witchcraft or to just plain scare the ever-loving crap out of someone, she’s who you need to see.

(I wish I had saved one of her drawings to show you, but they were all burned on account of the belief that they were summoning forth demons from hell.)

No one in our family can sing, but her singing is life-threatening.

If you ever have the opportunity to listen to her sing, I highly suggest you turn down that opportunity.

I’m sure her hearing issues are the cause of her inability to carry a tune, but her singing is really a sound that’s akin to a hyena being skinned alive or a dying howler monkey or a hyena being skinned alive as it eats a dying howler monkey.

So, you know, really bad. Like ear-drum-hemorrhaging bad.

If you listen to her sing, you will bleed out through your ears.

You’ve been warned.

And lastly — the one she’s probably most embarrassed about — she really does rock her Hittsburgh gear to the fullest.

And it’s kind of gross.

Now, before you get all defensive that I’m picking on your PittGirl, you should know that in my family we make fun of each other because we love each other. My dad and I are frequently made fun of for our big giant heads. We make fun of my mom because she cannot eat corn without getting it on her forehead — even if she’s eating it with a spoon. We make fun of Ta-Ta for her ridiculous boobs. We make fun of Pens Fan and Princess Aurora because when they get stressed out, they get this hideous rash on their fingers that makes it look like they’ve been letting sewer rats gnaw on their hands. We call it “rat finger.”

I told you we weren’t clever.

In spite of all that, my mother will get mad at me if I don’t say at least one genuinely positive thing about Ginny, so I leave you with this: In our family of six women, she is the only one capable of putting on makeup without looking like Whore Barbie.

I have a feeling the comments will be closer to 200 by the time all spitting, flashing and fighting comes to an end. As far as Gin’s rebuttal……She’s classic on a normal day but after a week of sun and fun I’m expecting epic. No pressure Gin!

So, pre-internet inventor Al Gore, when back windows would roll all the way down (funny, I NEVER heard about kids flying out of windows!) and I have 4 younger brothers all close in age, studio wrestling all the time in the car, and we grew up in Ford Country Squire station wagons!

Trips with all windows down, including the tailgate one, at all times, and Coke bottles to pee in.

Well, it wasn’t so much Democrats as it was Emergency Department docs who were getting a trifle tired of trying to cure people of all types, including small children, of blunt force trauma. Emergency personnel were growing a bit weary of seeing small children who, while standing in the backseat, were launched headfirst into and through the windshield. Sure, sometimes they stopped when their head hit the metal arm for the rear-view mirror, but they were still pretty dead or rendered into a persistent vegetative state.

Once upon a time, before seatbelts, crush zones and breakaway steering columns (the kind that don’t impale the driver on frontal impact), padded dashboards (those good old metal ones look great but do an awesome job of smashing skulls/chest walls) – but there you are, the Democrats passing all sorts of silly laws requiring automakers to do what they should have been doing all along and removing our individual freedom to be multilated in a crash.

I know seatbelts and airbags are good. I had a job hanging x-rays (back when they were all on film) and I quickly noticed the case folders labeled
“MVA restrained” (motor vehicle accident) were usually 1/2 inch thick while the ones labeled “MVA unrestrained” were up to 4″ thick. It’s a good thing.

I was being nostalgic, and I suppose grateful, and just stirring the polit pot a little! :-)

Funny thing about people: 20-25 percent of all of us have been beaten over the head with that knowledge for decades and still won’t wear them, just like 20-25 percent of us all still smoke. It seems about 1/5 to 1/4 of the population just refuse to do what’s good for them, no matter how much time and money we spend to “lift their consciousness” and “raise their awareness.” (Man, I’m tired of all this “lifting” and “raising” just from typing that.) (It would be interesting to know how many of them fall into both groups.) I don’t know if this makes them rebels or dumbasses or both, but I wonder why we devote so much effort trying to alter the behavior of people who refuse to be altered. Can’t we just raise the white flag on that one, let them kill themselves and move on?

If only they were just killing themselves, we could move on. Call it thinning the herd or Darwin Award candidates or something. Trouble is, there are innocent bystanders involved far too often, including the smoking issue.

I’m thinking Thinning the Herd would make a better band name than Innocent Bystanders.

The problem is that “letting the dumbasses kill themselves” costs you, me and everyone else a lot of money. Example: In Pennsylvania, our legislature has passed a law making anyone with a spinal cord injury eligible for Medical Assistance no matter what their income level is. You can therefore exercise your individual freedoms by not wearing a helmet, get thrown off your bike and then spend the rest of your time here whilst hooked up to whatever machine being paid for by the rest of us. Meanwhile, kids can’t get dental care because dental reimbursements are ridiculously low.

@EastEnder – I don’t know anybody with a bigger heart, devotes as much time and energy to helping those in need (Haitian orphans, the Kids room at the hospital, a Mom who lost her family and tried to get something accomplished at Frick Park, not to mention every good cause she passes along on her blog!

East End?? Go whine about Elsie Hilman! Ginny just calls ‘em like she sees ‘em!

THAT’S WHAT A BLOG IS YOU IDIOT!

And, I’m here to tell you she doesn’t censor quickly, trust me! Now do yourself a favor and move on, go for that Dem party hack job you want, keep drinking the Kool-Aid, work for Lukey’s re-election committee (he’s going to need it LOL.)